Shigeru Miyamoto is the creator of many of Nintendo's most popular franchises like Mario and The Legend of Zelda. He is turning 61 this year and has told GameSpot that retirement has been on his mind. He is trying to take a step back and get the younger generation of developers at Nintendo to be more involved in the creation process.

"This year I’m past 60; I’m going to be turning 61 this year. So for me to not be thinking about retirement would be strange," said Miyamoto. "But in fact, the number of projects I’m involved in--and the volume of my work--hasn’t changed at all."

"Instead, what we’re doing internally is, on the assumption that there may someday be a time when I’m no longer there," he continued," and in order for the company to prepare for that, what I’m doing is pretending like I’m not working on half the projects that I would normally be working on to try to get the younger staff to be more involved."

While retirement has been on his mind, it is not the reason he is taking a step back. He said that developers use to look at him for approval on decisions, but he now wants them to look at what the consumers wants and not what he wants.

"I try to duck out of the way, so that instead of them looking at me, they’re looking at the consumer and trying to develop their games with the consumer in mind rather than me in mind," he added. "So it’s really more of looking at this as sort of an opportunity to really try to help develop them and bring them up."

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This is actually the best way I can think of to handle this, let him step back - still be involved but get fresh blood in there as well. Nintendo has a lot of strengths but they also could use fresh ideas. Hopefully this will turn out to be a good thing, as long as they don't loose the Miyamoto magic.

"trying to develop their games with the consumer in mind". Thatīs the point of the industry that most gamers and most developers still donīt understand. People are so obsessed in graphics that they forget how the consumer feels about playing. videogames are about gameplay and about how consumers interact with them, and not about just visuals

It's from a recent interview from Gamespot and seems to be an important restructuring activity at Nintendo atm. I know it's not news but if Miyamoto talked about it at the interview it's probably because it's on his mind, for lack of knowing the interview questions.

I think Miyamoto should leave Nintendo and create his own Third Party developing company, much like Sakaguchi did, and do games for everyone. He could even do games for the iPhone and Android devices. Everyone knows he'd like to do those things, but he won't be doing them in Nintendo.

Finally, it's fresh blood that once upon a time brought us Metroid (not Miyamoto), Mario, and Zelda in the first place. Nintendo needs some new developers to bring Nintendo into the HD gaming world gracefully.